Produced by Radar Finance and | Zhang Kaijing, editor| deep sea
In 2021, turbulence and subversion have always accompanied the market, and under the new policy and pressure of supervision, many industries, including the Internet, real estate, online education, live e-commerce, etc., have encountered "Waterloo". But there are also nascent industries in the turmoil, and throughout the year, new energy vehicles are one of the biggest winners.
During the New Year's Day, a number of car companies released the 2021 "War Report". From the perspective of sales data, the global electric vehicle market still achieves contrarian growth in the environment of "lack of core", and domestic car companies have set off a car-making feast.
According to the China Automobile Association, domestic new energy vehicle sales will reach 3.4 million units in 2021, an increase of 1.5 times year-on-year. Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, said that in November 2021, China's new energy passenger car sales have accounted for 60% of the world's share, and affected by the imminent end of the purchase subsidy, domestic new energy vehicle sales are expected to exceed 6 million in 2022.
New energy vehicle feast, who is the biggest winner? Based on the market value and valuation as of December 31 last year, Radar Finance selected the top five in the traditional car companies and new car-making forces, and found that BYD, Great Wall Motors, SAIC Motor, Geely Automobile, GAC Group, Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal, Weima and Nezha Automobile were the top ten winners of domestic new energy vehicles in 2021.
Although these ten companies have performed well, the market pattern of new energy vehicles is undecided. Industry insiders predict that with the further decline of subsidies in 2022, industry competition will become more intense.
BYD's market is hot, and profits are stagnant
For a long time in the past, there was always the voice of "traditional car companies facing the wave of new energy transformation, still in the midst of elephant turning". In fact, in terms of sales alone, the new car-making forces have been in the role of catch-up since their appearance, and this situation is still continuing in 2021.
On the evening of January 3, 2022, BYD released a report card showing that the company's cumulative sales of new energy vehicles in 2021 603783, of which the sales of new energy passenger cars 593745, an increase of 231.6% year-on-year.
Among them, in December 2021 alone, BYD's sales of new energy passenger cars reached 92,823 units, an increase of 236.4% year-on-year, which has exceeded the annual sales of new energy vehicles of many car companies. In addition, BYD has won the global new energy vehicle sales championship in a single month from June to October.
Specifically, BYD's hot-selling models show a trend of EV pure electric and DM hybrids going hand in hand. The flagship model of its Dynasty series, the Han with blade battery, has grown significantly in the high-end new energy sedan market, and the rest of the Tang, Qin, Song and Yuan have also performed well in the market, and dolphin, the first mass-produced model of e-platform 3.0, also achieved sales of more than 10,000 in December.
It is worth mentioning that as early as October 2021, some netizens pointed out that BYD successfully achieved "one dozen ten", and its sales volume has been comparable to "Xiaopeng + Weilai + Ideal + Weima + Nezha + Zero Run + GAC Eian + Extreme Krypton + Volkswagen I.D Series + Lantu" ten.
Soaring sales, so that BYD in the secondary market valuation climbed steadily, its stock price from 2020 to October 2021 high once rose nearly 6 times, the highest market value was more than 900 billion yuan, even if the follow-up slight decline, there are currently 727.8 billion yuan, the highest domestic car companies.
"BYD's development this year is a big luck, or it is to keep the clouds open and see the moon." For the current situation of the company, chairman Wang Chuanfu once summed up in an interview with the media.
However, behind bydir's hot market, there are still many challenges. One of the most obvious problems is the dilemma of increasing revenue without increasing profits.
In the first three quarters of 2021, BYD's non-net profit fell by 64.45% year-on-year to 886 million yuan in the case of revenue growth of 38.25% year-on-year, and this is still in the case of the company's financial expenses decreased by nearly 17 billion yuan year-on-year, if BYD's financial expenses maintain the 2020 data, its non-net profit in the first three quarters of 2021 will lose more than 800 million yuan.
The disappearance of the mask business and the increase in the price of raw materials are one of the reasons for BYD's profit setback, and more importantly, the company's current valuation of a dynamic price-earnings ratio of 241 times has laid hidden dangers for future growth.
In contrast, SAIC Motor, which has 4 times and 20 times the revenue and non-net profit of BYD, respectively, has a market value of only about one-third of BYD. If it cannot increase profits while sales continue to be high, whether BYD can maintain investor confidence in the future needs to be marked with a question mark.
The Sales Volume and Stock Price of the Great Wall have been harvested, and there are still variables in the subsequent development
If you look at the market value in the secondary market, then the second most domestic car company behind BYD is Great Wall Motors.
In the first 11 months of 2021, Great Wall Motor's sales of new energy vehicles increased to 114,000 units, an increase of 162% year-on-year. At one point, the company's stock price increased by more than 80% during the year. If the time is relaxed to the beginning of 2020, the market value of Great Wall Motors has increased by more than 7 times.
Thanks to this, on October 19, 2021, Wei Jianjun, the founder of Great Wall Motors, topped the richest man in Hebei and the richest man in the automotive industry with a value of 31 billion US dollars.
However, as a veteran car company, Great Wall Motors actually did not keep up with the east wind of new energy in the first time. At a shareholders' meeting in 2016, Wei Jianjun personally expressed concerns about the environmental protection of new energy vehicles, and he also said that the Great Wall only serves as a follower of the new energy industry.
This directly led to the slow establishment of the electric vehicle brand Euler by Great Wall Motors in 2018, and the positioning as a "feminine automobile brand" and the price of euler after subsidies did not exceed 150,000 yuan, it was difficult to support the complete new energy layout of Great Wall Motors.
In order to further enhance the company's competitiveness in the field of new energy, great wall in the use of pure electricity + hybrid + hydrogen fuel three-legged walking, but also launched WEY, Sharon Zhixing and other different positioning of the brand to cope with the different needs of the market. Wei Jianjun aims to achieve sales of 4 million by 2025, of which 3.2 million will come from new energy vehicles.
However, on the one hand, the sales growth rate of Great Wall Motors has been hovering below 20% for many years, if calculated, its target of 4 million vehicles in 2025 is basically impossible to achieve; on the other hand, in the fierce market competition environment, there is no Great Wall Motor that chooses to cooperate with "big manufacturers" like SAIC, Geely, FAW and other traditional car companies, and it is quite difficult to complete the counterattack.
Geely New Energy did not meet expectations, betting on Extreme Krypton in 2022
In contrast, Geely Automobile, which is called "the top three independent brands" with the Great Wall and BYD, is "getting up early and catching up late" in terms of new energy vehicle manufacturing.
In 2015, Geely launched its first new energy vehicle Emgrand EV, and opened a five-year plan called "Blue Geely Action", planning to achieve new energy vehicle sales accounting for more than 90% of Geely's overall sales in 2020.
Since then, Geely has first released the high-end pure electric brand "Geometric Car" in Singapore, and then separated the PoleStar brand from Volvo, and on the basis of Emgrand, promoted the Lynk & Co brand to also release a new energy strategy. However, in 2020, Geely's new energy vehicle sales accounted for only 5.16%, which is far from the target.
According to the data, Geely's new energy sales were still in the fourth place in the industry in 2019, and by the first 11 months of 2021, only 81,300 vehicles ranked eleventh in the industry, which has fallen out of the top ten.
In Li Shufu's view, the failure of the Blue Geely operation "is not the wrong strategic direction, nor the failure of strategic implementation, but the historical timing is not ripe, and external strategic conditions have not been formed." ”
Some people in the industry believe that a major reason why Geely has not been able to maintain its first-mover advantage is that it relies too much on the B-side.
In the early stage of the development of new energy vehicles, industrial policy is the main driving force for market development, and the main area of benefit at this time is the B-end market. However, with the rapid reversal of the market structure, the C-end has gradually become the main force of consumption, which has caught Geely off guard. After all, judging from the sales results in recent years, Geely does not have a fist product that can be beaten.
So, can the official guide price of around 300,000 yuan of Extreme Kr 001 open up the deadlock for Geely? At least from the disguised price increases, configuration shrinkage, black screens, App fryers and other problems before the delivery of its off-line, as well as the delivery results of 3796 vehicles in December, the future is still unclear.
SAIC and GAC have excellent sales, but it is difficult to solve the dilemma of market value
Also "far-sighted" with Geely is SAIC Motor. As early as 2015, SAIC motor put forward the four innovation development strategies of "electrification, intelligent networking, sharing and internationalization" before the industry, and the data given by the company showed that it invested nearly 60 billion yuan in independent research and development in the field of new energy during the 13th Five-Year Plan period.
This move also brought huge sales growth to SAIC. Although SAIC has not yet released the sales data of new energy vehicles in 2021, its production and sales report released in November shows that sachinchinar's cumulative sales of new energy vehicles in the first 11 months of 2021 reached 638186 units, an increase of 155.45% year-on-year. And in 2020, SAIC New Energy Vehicle won the domestic new energy market sales championship with a sales volume of 320,000.
Among them, SAIC-GM-Wuling's "ace product" Hongguang MINI sold 370,000 units from January to November 2021.
Although it is dominant in start-up and sales, SAIC's market value has been criticized by the market.
As of January 4, 2022, its market value is not only far lower than THAT Andi and Great Wall Motors, but also inferior to the "new forces" such as Weilai and Xiaopeng. In 2020, when new energy vehicle stocks are full of bulls, SAIC's stock price has risen by less than 8%, and if the time is magnified to 2020 so far, its stock price has even fallen by nearly 6%.
Radar Finance found that behind the long-term downturn in SAIC's stock price, the company's operation is very dependent on joint venture brands such as Volkswagen and GM.
In 2020, the sales of saic-volkswagen, GM and GM Wuling subsidiaries accounted for more than 80% of the group's total sales; the net profit attributable to Volkswagen and GM accounted for 67% of the company's total. But in fact, since 2019, the three major joint ventures have collectively stalled, and sales have declined to varying degrees.
In the first three quarters of 2021, SAIC's revenue and attributable net profit fell by 13.17% and 14.75% respectively year-on-year, and net cash flow fell by more than 80% year-on-year. As of November, SAIC Motor's vehicle sales were still more than 1.36 million units short of the annual sales target of 6.17 million units, and sales were basically a foregone conclusion.
In addition, SAIC's layout in the field of electric vehicles can be described as "thunder is loud and rain is small". Today, the company's models at the top of the electric vehicle sales list, in addition to the most "popular" Hongguang MINI, there is only one Roewe Ei5. Although the former is called "Wuling Shenche", it is actually not profitable, in the first half of 2021, SAIC-GM-Wuling in the case of revenue of more than 32.2 billion yuan, the net profit attributable to SAIC Group is only more than 400 million yuan.
The performance of performance has faded SAIC's name of "sales first". In a similar predicament, there is also the GAC Group.
Driven by GAC Aeon, GAC achieved a cumulative total of 123,700 terminal sales in 2021, an increase of 119% year-on-year. But the company's overall earnings still depend on contributions from GAC Honda and GAC Toyota, whose combined sales accounted for more than 75 percent of the company's total sales in the first three quarters of this year.
In the context of the lack of cores, the production and sales of the "two fields" have slowed down, and the performance of GAC Group has also been reduced. In the third quarter of 2021, the company's net profit attributable to the mother was 947 million yuan, down 64.71% year-on-year.
It is worth noting that as the main sales force of E-an, the E-An S, a large proportion of its sales structure is mainly based on online ride-hailing and taxi-related enterprises, not individual users. The total sales volume of E-an S in GAC Ae-An accounts for more than 90%, and the price of E-An Y is also concentrated in the range of 100,000-150,000.
In contrast, the average monthly sales of the Aeon LX, the earliest high-end model built by Aeon, is less than 100 units, and the average monthly sales of Aeon V are only about 1,000. This means that the company is still a long way from entering the premium market.
The pattern of "Wei Xiaoli" has changed
Behind the traditional car companies, the "new forces" of car manufacturing are accelerating to catch up.
In 2019, He Xiaopeng said, "Selling 100,000 cars a year is the premise of all future possibilities." "In 2021, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal have been infinitely close to this premise, but many people may not have expected that the closest of them is Xiaopeng.
Looking back at the 2020 report card, at that time, the annual delivery volume of Weilai, Ideal and Xiaopeng was 43,700 vehicles, 32,600 vehicles and 27,000 vehicles respectively, and Xiaopeng only had less than 5,000 more vehicles than WM behind him. However, in 2021, the order of delivery has changed to 98,100 vehicles for Xiaopeng, 91,400 vehicles for Weilai, and 90,500 vehicles for the ideal, and Xiaopeng has opened a gap of more than 50,000 vehicles with Weimara.
Xiaopeng can achieve the evolution of sales volume, on the one hand, thanks to its high sales and research and development investment.
According to the financial report, in the third quarter of 2021, Xiaopeng's sales, general and administrative expenses increased by nearly 50% month-on-month, and the number of sales stores increased by 71, as a comparison, in the first three quarters of 2021, Xiaopeng's sales stores increased by a total of 111.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, Xiaopeng's consecutive "Science and Technology Day" and "Brand Renewal Day" helped the company earn enough gimmicks. In order to make the label of "intelligent" more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, Xiaopeng also announced that it will enter the Field of Robotaxi (self-driving taxi) in the second half of 2022 on the basis of announcing the mass production of flying cars three years later.
The consequence of this is that although Xiaopeng ranks first in terms of sales volume, whether it is revenue, net profit or gross profit margin, it is behind Weilai and ideal, and the company can not see any signs of reversal in the short future. After all, Robotaxi even Tesla, Baidu, Didi and other large factories that have invested huge amounts of money are still struggling to explore, and the dispersion of investment in the original intelligent field will also make it more difficult for Xiaopeng to break the game.
On the other hand, the decline in NIO's sales in the second half of 2021 is also one of the key factors for Xiaopeng to reach the top of the sales list of new forces.
As early as July 2021, Weilai's sales have already declined month-on-month; in October, Weilai's sales once fell to the fifth of the new forces, which was surpassed by Nezha Automobile and Weima Automobile.
Radar Finance once mentioned in the article "Li Bin wants to go" that the sharp decline in Weilai's sales volume is related to the transformation and upgrading of the production line, but behind the factory upgrade may not be a simple bottleneck in production capacity, but in the context of the "lack of core" superimposed epidemic, there is a passive situation of untimely supply at the supply chain end of Weilai.
In August, due to the impact of the epidemic in Malaysia, Nanjing and other places, Weilai's delivery volume fell out of the top three of the new forces.
The supply chain weakness exposed by the lack of cores also exists in the ideal and Xiaopeng. In order to ensure the delivery volume, ideal, Xiaopeng have launched a reduction plan, if consumers want to get the ideal ONE and Xiaopeng P5 as soon as possible, you can choose to reduce the radar, and then reload after the supply keeps up. In September, Ideal also fell to the fourth place in the new force due to the lack of cores.
In the view of industry insiders, this reflects that although the "three fools of car manufacturing" have stronger innovation capabilities and Internet operation thinking, in terms of supply chain supporting systems, there is still a significant gap with traditional car companies that have been deeply cultivating the industry for many years and have obvious advantages in sales.
Some people in the automotive chip industry have said that when chip manufacturers supply car factories, they give priority to the sales scale of car companies, and this is not a small test for a number of "new forces" car companies.
In addition, the successive outbreaks of negative public opinion in Wei Xiaoli in 2021 have also sounded the alarm for companies in the rising period. Weilai's seat design complaints, high-speed death caused by the owner's infighting; the ideal leek door, mercury door; Xiaopeng's "blatant deception", illegal collection of face information, etc. all reveal the company's shortcomings in detail control during the expansion period.
Obviously, if the "three fools of car manufacturing" want to truly occupy the initiative in the market, they also need to make up for the shortcomings of the supply chain and complete further polishing of their own products.
The second echelon of "new forces" grew rapidly, and many "new players" entered the game
The rise of new forces in second-tier car manufacturing is another important feature of the domestic new energy vehicle market in 2021.
Among them, Nezha Automobile's sales in January 2021 were only in its early 2000s, and by the end of the year, November to December had already joined the camp of monthly sales of 10,000 vehicles, and finally sold 69,700 vehicles in 2021, an increase of 361.70% year-on-year.
Thanks to the rapid growth of sales, Nezha Automobile has obtained three rounds of financing in 2021, of which there are many well-known institutions such as Qihoo 360 and Ningde Times. Before receiving investment from CATL in November, Nezha Automobile was valued at 22 billion yuan, more than 6 times more than 3.5 billion yuan in February 2020.
Zero-run cars have followed a similar growth path. Its sales in January 2021 are less than 2,000, and its sales in December are close to 8,000 vehicles, surpassing the original "Four Little Dragons" WM car in terms of monthly sales.
However, in terms of total year-end sales, there is still a slight gap between the 43,100 zero-run cars and the 44,100 units of WM Motors. And from the valuation point of view, before the completion of the financing in December, the third-party valuation of WM Automobile has reached 6 billion US dollars, which is also ahead of Nezha and Zero Run.
It is worth noting that in the market in 2021, there are many more cross-border new players, including well-known "mobile phone manufacturers" such as Xiaomi and Huawei.
However, in terms of the attitude of car building, Xiaomi and Huawei are completely different.
Lei Jun regards this as his "last major entrepreneurial project" and is willing to "bet all his reputation" for this, and Xiaomi has also frequently invested in related companies in the industrial chain after the official announcement of the car. Recently, it has been reported that Xiaomi will build its own factory in Beijing, with an estimated annual production capacity of 300,000 vehicles and achieve mass production of the first vehicle in 2024.
While Huawei firmly emphasizes "not building a whole vehicle", it has triggered various associations with the outside world with its "empowering" car manufacturing method. At the recent Huawei winter new product launch conference, Huawei released the first model of the AITO brand, the M5, and before that, there was never a precedent for suppliers to release vehicle products instead of the brand side.
From the perspective of trademark ownership, the AITO brand undoubtedly belongs to the well-off group behind Xilis. However, after more than 1 hour of the M5 release activity, not only did not appear on the stage of the relevant people of Xilis, but even Yu Chengdong's speech rarely mentioned Xilis; as a comparison, when Xilis released the AITO brand, Yu Chengdong made a video speech, and the speeches of relevant people of Xilis frequently mentioned Huawei.
Will Huawei really go down to build a car? Some auto analysts believe that Huawei's internal car-making faction or hope that the outside world will have expectations for Huawei's large package, in fact blocking the possibility of Huawei's cooperation with the main vehicle manufacturer as a tier1, and finally leaving Huawei with only one road to build cars and achieve a dark Chen cang.
In addition, foreign car companies, including Volkswagen, Honda, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Ford, etc., as well as new forces that appeared at the end of the year such as Niu Innovative Energy and Light Orange Era, are also eyeing the new energy vehicle market.
Lack of core superimposed price increases, can the 2022 outlet continue?
Radar Finance noted that from the perspective of all aspects, on the basis of the "big sale" of new energy vehicles in 2021, 2022 will be a key year for the market.
On the one hand, the subsidy policy will further decline, according to the predetermined plan, 2022 is the last year of the subsidy, and the subsidy scale has been cancelled the original upper limit of 2 million vehicles. Analysts believe that this may lead to a significant rush/buy at the end of 2022, reinforcing sales growth expectations in 2022.
On the other hand, in 2021, many car companies have formulated chip industry policies, such as Geely recently announced China's first 7nm process vehicle specification SOC chip developed by CoreTek Technology, which is expected to achieve mass production in the third quarter of 2022. This will alleviate the impact of the lack of cores to some extent.
According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the market penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China in 2021 has increased from 5.4% at the beginning of the year to 12.7% at the end of the year. In November, it was as high as 17.8%.
Usually, the penetration rate is at 10%-15%, which is the inflection point of the rapid rise of the industry. Therefore, the China Automobile Association predicts that in 2022, China's new energy vehicle sales will reach 5 million, an increase of 47% year-on-year.
Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Passenger Car Market Information Joint Committee, estimates that the sales of new energy vehicles will reach more than 5.5 million in 2022, and even expected to exceed 6 million. "The recognition of new energy vehicles by domestic consumers has been greatly improved. Even if the price of vehicles increases slightly after the subsidy declines, it will be a short-term phenomenon. ”
Industry insiders predict that the competition in the new energy vehicle market in 2022 will be particularly fierce.
Note: This article is the original of Radar Finance (ID: leidacj). Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.